Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by miohtama | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

miohtama·

Tax avoidance

https://itep.org/amazon-avoids-more-than-5-billion-in-corpor...

That's why SMEs cannot compete against Amazon

View on HN

Every company avoids taxes. Shit, I damn avoid taxes whenever I can.

Blame the game, not the player.

It ain’t my fault they wrote the laws wrong. And I’m not giving away my advantage when no one else is gonna.

If everyone is doing it, it's not even an advantage, but merely a necessity to be competitive.

Correct, yep. Which is why tax avoidance is not a crime, but tax evasion is.

It would be a rather strange conversation with an accountant doing your taxes, if you walked up and said “hey, can you make it so that i pay more taxes than the legal minimum I am obligated to?”

Not really, because as pointed out large companies can do it much better than small ones.

Every company does not have as many resources and tax lawyers to minimize their tax burden as Amazon.

No, and nor do I compared to a rich person.

But is telling anyone "don't minimize your taxes" really practical?

Nobody said that. Nobody was hating the player.

Agreed, and that's why corporate taxes shouldn't exist. They functionally penalize small business under every system that exists.

The player is often also creating the game as they play, so I will continue to blame them.

That's not why, if you think competitors are not doing everything they can to avoid taxation you're naive.

Yes, I’m sure if it weren’t for the taxes, they wouldn’t have any problem creating billions of dollars worth of warehouses, spending even more money for a logistics network.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com